The Risks & Perils of Do-It-Yourself Pest Control

The Risks & Perils of Do-It-Yourself Pest Control

Have you ever thought doing your own pest control? Have you ever turned to Google for how to trap a raccoon or skunk, or the safest way to remove a hornets nest? Hardware stores make it easy to try and do some of these things yourself by selling you all the products you think you need. But beware: trapping and removing wildlife or getting rid of insects isn’t as easy as your Google search results might make it seem. Here are a few lessons we’ve seen people learn the hard way while trying to get rid of wildlife or pests.

Bites and Stings and Stinky Things

Buying an animal trap isn’t terribly difficult to do – most hardware stores sell them and they’re not difficult to set up.

But what are you going to do once you’ve caught whatever animal it is that is bothering you? In general, animals don’t like to be trapped. Like humans, they have a natural fight-or-flight survival mechanism, so if they can’t run away from you – because they’re trapped – they’re going to try and attack you. If you’ve bought a trap and managed to trap something, get ready to deal with a snarling, scratching, biting, surly pile of unhappiness.

If you do survive trapping and releasing it, there’s a good chance you’ll see the critter back within a few hours. Animals are naturally very good navigators, so if you don’t release them very far away you’re your home, they’ll find their way back to their – and your – homes.

Unless you’re dealing with a skunk, of course. Skunks have a very special way of warding off potential threats. Trust us, you’ll know it when it happens, as will everyone else in your neighborhood.

Hornets and wasps have chemical defences against threats to their nests. When you kill a wasp, it will secrete a special kind of chemical called a pheromone. This signals to other wasps in the vicinity that there is a threat in the area: you. Those other wasps will attack to protect the nest.

So, if you’re thinking of buying some wasp killer and then all your problems will go away, beware that you’re dealing with natural defences that are much more versatile than you might think!

Low Quality Tools Yield Low Quality Results

Hardware stores are notorious for stocking wildlife removal and pest control products that just aren’t good enough to the do the job. Check out these two pictures:

In the one on the left, the homeowner decided to use some chicken wire to try and keep some wildlife from under his deck. Clearly, the results are less than impressive. Animals like skunks, raccoons, squirrels and opossums have strong hands and sharp teeth, and can make short work of cheap and flimsy building materials.

In the picture on the right, one of our wildlife removal technicians has dug down to a deck’s foundation and installed metal lattice and a one-way door. You can see the lattice is firmly bolted into the wood. When whatever is living under that deck is out, it’s staying out!

After it’s out, we’ll backfill the dirt and you’ll hardly be able to see the metal lattice. And you’ll never see what’s made its home under there ever again!

Making a Bad Problem Worse

When we do wildlife removal or pest control services, we do more than just get rid of whatever it is that’s causing the issue. We treat the whole area so that whatever it is doesn’t come back again.

In the picture above on the right, you can see that we’ve dug up well beyond either side of the hole and treated the whole area. If we simply blocked up the hole or put a one-way door where the hole was, whatever lived under there would simply burrow another hole and our efforts would be wasted.

Whenever we provide a wildlife removal or pest control treatment, we treat the entire area.

But the problem can go beyond whatever it is coming back: not treating the problem properly can make matters worse. Say, for example, you have ants in your back patio and you go to the store and get ant killer. Ants have a tremendous survival instinct, so if they sense that their nest is threatened, they can evacuate the nest and set up multiple new nests. This is called “fracturing”. If you don’t treat ant issues properly, you run the risk of splitting one nest into several nests.

Trust Professionals to Do the Job Right!

Pest control and wildlife removal services aren’t as easy as you might think. Doing the job properly includes knowing how to properly handle animals and insects if you come into close contact with them, using the right materials for the job, and knowing how to treat the whole situation and not just the obvious issue. Our technicians are fully trained to do the job right, the first time!